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CAROP’s Most Successful Summit
By Ron Geddert
“What is success for you?” asked Dale Monette, the final expert presenter at the seventh annual CAROP Summit.
Dale went on to suggest that success in business is typically a five-stage process that requires increasing customer leads, increasing conversion rates, thereby increasing the number of transactions, increasing the revenue per transaction, will ultimately leading to increased profitability.
He then demonstrated how his successful Homeowners Now business is implementing these steps, largely through automation, to the point that they received 20,000 applications last month. The business has about a dozen employees, with a successful closing of nearly 100%
It was the culmination of a day chock-full of input from industry experts, to help rent to own operators improve their operations and successes.
The forty-five, or so, attendees (incidentally, more than a third were women) were meeting at the Old Stone Inn, just blocks away from the famous Niagara Falls. Many were rent to own operators, but the group also included realtors, investors, mortgage brokers and others interested in the Industry.
This first CAROP Summit held outside of Western Canada reflected the growth of an originally western Canadian movement to become nation-wide. By number, nearly a third of CAROP’s members now hale from Ontario, but some of these are also among Canada’s largest rent to own operators.
The day had begun with a presentation by Amiel Jelinek, a leading mortgage broker with Mortgage Alliance, on how to qualify tenant-buyers so as to anticipate successful outcomes. He detailed all the specific elements to look for, just as a mortgage broker or lender would, to ensure that we get it right. While we may use mortgage brokers to formally assess applicants, it is important that every rent-to-own operator also understands the range of requirements.
For this scribe, his presentation already made the event worth its price.
After the break, Limor Markman, a Wealth and Money Coach presented on how to attract and qualify investors for our programs. She described the rent-to-own model as a “Top Secret Investing Strategy” that effectively meets all the concerns a typical investor might have with investing in residential property—or any other kind of investments, for that matter.
The ultimate benefit of rent 2 own investing is the asymmetrical risk-reward curve that it follows; although one of the highest yielding investments, it is also one of the safest!
After lunch, lawyer Rod Refcio, who specializes in rent to own with some CAROP members, presented an engaging lecture on the importance of setting up the right structures for our deals and getting the contracts right. He pointed out that there is very little case law related to rent to own so that we must be overly diligent to cover all our bases with sufficient and accurate wording. What we as individual operators, and as an association, do, will influence the future legal and regulatory approach around the industry. Refcio punctuated his talk by handing out $100 bills to guests who correctly answered his questions (thus, creatively averting any after lunch slump).
After the four formal presentations, a panel of four seasoned CAROP members, each with a slightly different operational model, elaborated on their experiences, interacting with the moderator’s (Jeff Belanger of Home Owner Soon) formal questions and the audience’s further queries.
Throughout the four presentations and the panel, there was strong engagement and high energy from the attendees. Chair Alfonso Salemi (of JAAG Properties, who’d also been the key organizer of the event—Thank you Alfonso!), in his own entertaining style, stepped in frequently to keep the day moving.
